


ready to fight

by aphrodite_mine



Category: United States of Tara
Genre: Community: femgenficathon, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:05:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post season 3 finale, Tara enters therapy with a new doctor in Boston.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ready to fight

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 47) _One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world_. --Hannah Senesh (or Chana Szenes) (1921-1944), Hungarian-born Palestinian Jew who volunteered to be trained by the British to be a rescue commando. She parachuted into Yugoslavia with the intent of crossing into Nazi-occupied Hungary and rescuing the Hungarian Jews who were about to be taken away to the death camp of Auschwitz. She was captured and tortured, but refused to tell anything about the remaining commandos. She was tried for treason and executed by firing squad.

\--

  
from [sayacandy](http://sayacandy.tumblr.com/post/6489447687)

\--

 _it's like you know where i'm going  
you follow me home but  
i never invite you inside_  
from "Quiet" by Demi Lovato

\--

Tara keeps expecting to come out of the gas station bathroom (there are hundreds, they run together like old photographs in her mind) and find the truck gone, her things in a little pile by the auto-open doors. She pees, takes a deep breath, emerges, repeats. He's still there, always, the engine running.

 _What brings you to therapy at this time?_

She deserves a happy ending, you know. Maybe not with all the hearts and flowers she dreamed of in some misguided youth, a youth that ended too quickly, perhaps before it even got going. Maybe not the ending that Charmaine would prescribe, full of white picket fences and a tubby little husband cooing a baby to sleep. It might not be a happy ending anyone but her would recognize.

Some peace and quiet, mostly. To grow old without the fear that something inside of her will come in the night and snatch it all away. To grow old knowing that she'll be there to experience all of it, not just the good parts. Not just the bad parts.

She wants to wake up and not wonder what she's done this time. She wants that the most.

 _When did this begin, your experience with dissociative identity?_

Max flips through the radio stations: country, country, sports, rap, country, country, makes a grunting noise deep in his chest and flips the whole thing off. "Nothing like a road trip to provide for that musical education you always longed for," he says, the tiniest of smiles in his voice.

She slips into their rhythm easily. It always has been easy, when it wasn't hard. "And here I thought that the rest of the great US had nothing on Overland Park."

"Nothing to write home about. That's for sure." He takes a turn in the highway, pulling all of his concentration out to the road, gaze flicking at the surrounding cars. Tara feels her body lean into the curve and holds her hands out in front of her, takes in a sharp breath.

"When I was little," she starts, not knowing where this is headed, not caring, "there was this tree I liked to climb. In the front yard." She doesn't know which front yard, where, but she can see the tree, the arms stretching out over her head. One of them knocking at a window at night when she tires to sleep. "Char couldn't reach the bottom branch, so I would climb up and just sit there, teasing her. She would give up after awhile, find something else to do. And then I would look out, over my _kingdom_ and feel like..."

Max looks at her. She can't read his expression.

Tara doesn't know what she felt like. She doesn't finish the sentence. Leans against the window instead.

 _Has it grown better or worse over time?_

That's kind of a fucked up question, don't you think? The parts that she can remember... it's a jumble, really. There's good and there's bad and then there's Bryce. And when it was good it was very very good, and when it was bad it was awful. Isn't that how the rhyme goes?

 _What would you like to gain from your time here?_

Alice clucks at her reflection in the mirror, reaching out, and dabs gently at her face, hissing quietly when the peroxide stings. "T, Buck, get in here," she sings. "I don't have time to hunt you down."

"Knew that little asshole wouldn't keep me down. The Buck don't stop here. Can't stop, won't stop." He punches the air, testing out his strength. "Yep. Still kickin'."

"Barely," T replies, limping into the room, frowning down at herself. "At least that little Chicken-fucker is gone."

Alice clucks. "Mustn't speak ill of the dead, now, T." She tucks at T's hair, picking at a knot. "Even those we're certainly better off without."

 _Do you have any questions?_

The place in Boston is nice. It doesn't smell like cleaning solution but doesn't look dirty either. The walls are painted the faintest pink; someone without an artist's eye could easily hand-wave it off as white, maybe eggshell if they wanted to get fancy. Nice, unfortunately, also means expensive, and though they knew the price going in -- had known it for years -- it's still a lot to swallow and Tara waits for Max's slow nod before signing herself away.

These are his dreams she spending, too, she reminds herself.

But maybe, once she's done here, once they make that same journey across half the country together but in reverse, maybe then she'll be ready to take more of life than the lowest common denominator, to put in more than she takes away.

"Visiting hours are four to six on weekdays, and on Sunday you'll have all day together." The intake officer is a small woman with dark hair. _Slip of a thing. Hardly worth writing home about,_ says Buck, sizing her up. But no, there's a hint of muscle when she -- Dani -- authorizes the form and Tara relaxes, finally feeling Max's hand, strong, at her back.

"Conjugal visits?" Tara asks, teasing because she doesn't know how else to do this, how else to resign herself to this place, to the fight.

Dani smiles. "I'm sure that can be arranged."

 _How are you feeling right now, Ms. Gregson?_

There's an emptiness inside her that you can never understand, that you never _will_ understand. She remembers feeling like this, or some approximation of this feeling, after giving birth. Of course, at the same time that she felt a tangible loss, she also gained something pretty fucking significant. What she couldn't feel inside she could hold in her arms.

There's nothing like that now.

She can remember those moments when she wasn't quite herself and wasn't quite someone else, when the tendrils of another mind would slowly slip out of hers. Chicken's raw joy and fear. Shoshanna's clear-headed wisdom. Alice's condescension. Gimmie's way of seeing the world in colors, shapes moving. Buck's frustration. T's insolence and indignation.

Some of it is still there, on the edges of thought. She can feel T, for example, in group when she watches Jack talk -- his tattoos moving with his muscles as he gestures, his earrings removed for safety. She can feel Buck, to be sure, when Dani from reception nods in her direction, smiles that private smile and turns away. And Alice, too, lingering. That small voice in the morning reminding her to hospital-tuck the bed linen.

Tara wonders what Gimmie might write on the walls of this place, what Shoshanna might advise Carol the anorexic, what Chicken would chase after, down the halls.

 _Can you tell me about your previous experiences with therapy?_

"Sunday, Sunday, Sunday," Max announces, clapping his hands together as he enters the socializing room. "Well, Tara, you've made it another week in this place. What's the dish?" He sits down next to her and presses a kiss to her temple, the movement strong yet gentle, though Tara knows he's getting damn tired of this routine.

"I can happily report that Carol entered the caf without having a panic attack, and Robert actually _cried_ during group. It was pretty incredible."

Max's hand feels heavy on her knee. "You know what I meant."

"I think I've made progress," Tara says quietly, lying because she can. "I mean, I'm talking. They're getting quieter. Less needy, perhaps." She doesn't tell him that yesterday she spent three hours in the lobby sitting still because the undeniable feeling of _presence_ wouldn't let her walk away. That they're in her head with a consistency now that should frighten her, but instead make her feel less alone with this thing, this emptiness, this lack.

Max looks at her like he's expecting something more, simply waiting, like he's done for months now.

"I haven't transitioned all week," Tara says, and that much is true. _It wouldn't kill you to use more of that, the truth. He hasn't left you so far..._ Tara can't tell if the thought comes from herself, or some variant of that.

Max kisses her on the forehead and lingers there. She feels all right.

 _Tell me a little about yourself, Ms. Gregson, about_ Tara _so to speak._

She's surprised by the question; shouldn't be but is.

Her life is -- has been -- fucked up for as long as she can remember. The worst parts are tied up intrinsically with the parts she _can't_ remember, or has made herself forget, the parts she can only piece together with what's left, with a catalog of her body, of her mind.

She loves art. Loves the chaos and control of it, how one layer of paint is rarely enough.

Her body has been a stranger for so long, but she's home now, somehow. She's ready to invite you in.


End file.
